The Afterlife of Roman Sculpture # 3: Spolia

The term spolia is commonly used to refer to parts of monuments that have been re-used in later buildings. This kind of recycling was practised extensively in both the late antique and medieval periods, and has been the topic of a wide range of studies, including a recent doctoral dissertation by Maria Fabricius Hansen at the University of Aarhus, who deals primarily with the many cathedrals and churches in Rome that bear witness to the tradition of spolia, but they were used in many other parts of the Mediterranean, especially in areas where there was a tradition for monumental architecture. Often architectural elements, such as column drums (see photo), were recycled, because they had very little religious significance and were conveniently at hand.

Vaison
Roman column drums reused as foundation blocks in the Cathédrale Notre Dame de Nazareth de Vaison-la-Romaine, France. Photo: TMK, September 2002.

A different use of spolia is exemplified by the Arch of Constantine. This monumental arch in the centre of Rome was adorned with reused sculpture from the reigns of Trajan, Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius as well as a few contemporary pieces. This kind of reuse has often been interpreted as a kind of literary quotation. In this case Constantine probably wanted to legimitize his rule by making connections to earlier emperors from Rome’s “golden age”.

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Statue Bases and Mutilated Inscriptions

Congratulations to Jakob (Munk Højte), whose PhD dissertation “Roman Imperial Statue Bases from Augustus to Commodus” now finally is available from Aarhus University Press in the new-format Aarhus Studies in Mediterranean Antiquity (ASMA) vol. 7.

Roman Imperial Statue Bases

As Philip (Harland) has shown in a series of recent posts epigraphy is an incredibly valuable source to the ancient world. It is also an interdisciplinary field divided between ancient history, classical philology and archaeology, which means that inscriptions sometimes have been neglected in purely archaeological and art historical works. In the case of Roman imperial portraiture, this led to a situation where statue bases and sculpture have mostly been studied separately. This is what Jakob’s study aims to change, and he was worked intesively with statistical analysis to gain new insights into the distribution and production of Roman imperial portraits.

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More Archaeological Art?

I have now settled in here in Canada, and blogging will be regular again. Speaking of Canada, the SAS inflight magazine had a small feature on Margaret Nicholson’s project “100 Pieces“. Here’s her own description:

In April of 2005, I placed 100 pieces of clay sculpture along the coastline of Nova Scotia. Lost or found, they will be left to nature or chance. Hopefully for someone to find. The sculpture is all figurative fragments or small busts. Each piece is fitted with an identity tag directing the finder to this web site which will then describe the origins of the piece that they have found. I put these sculptures in places that would not be inaccessible but not immediately obvious. Many of the pieces are designed to blend into their environment. The project is monitored over time and open ended. There is no precise way to determine the end point.

Another example of archaeological art?

The New Ara Pacis Museum

Over at Arcspace, there’s an interesting feature on the new Ara Pacis museum in Rome, due to open in 2006. Niels (Hannestad) has recently argued that this Augustan monument was repaired in the early 4th century CE, possibly by Maxentius. This was followed by an intense debate in Journal of Roman Archaeology. It will be interesting to see how this scholarly discussion will be presented in the new exhibition.

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The Little Mermaid

In the early stages of this blog, I wrote that I would be giving some modern examples of iconoclasm. Hence, today’s post is about one of Copenhagen’s most popular tourist attractions, the statue of The Little Mermaid. The 200th birthday of Hans Christian Andersen is being celebrated this year, so it is fitting to retell the story of how the statue portraying his Little Mermaid lost her head.


The Little Mermaid without her head.

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The Problem of Dating

Dating is esential for an archaeological study of iconoclasm. Statues were destroyed for many different reasons both before and after the fourth century CE, and just how tricky this issue can be is well illustrated by a monument known as the Charonion in Antioch, modern Antakya. It’s usually dated to the Hellenistic period and related to a story in the Chronographia of John Malalas, who himself was born in Antioch and writing in the sixth century. The story tells of certain seer, Leios, who in response to a plague in the city demands that a prosopeion (‘mask’) was to be carved on the face of the mountain (205.8-13). Excavations at the site were carried out in the 1930s along with many other sites in Antioch that produced a huge number of mosaics for museums around the world. In his classic history of Antioch, Glanville Downey notes that “the face of the bust has been badly battered” (p. 104). If this monument found just outside Antioch and above the Grotto of St Peter is the Charonion mentioned by Malalas, it has been out in the open for nearly 2500 years, exposed not only to the elements, but also random acts of vandalism and other kinds of destruction. The damage to the small statue is probably due to weathering, but it does seem to me that the head of the main figure has been struck by a sharp instrument. While this certainly could be classed as an act of iconoclasm, the lack of a precise date for this violence makes it difficult to blame early Christians.

Charonion
The Charonion outside Antioch, and just above the Grotto of St Peter. Photo: TMK, August 2003.

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Peter Stewart on Iconoclasm

Peter Stewart’s Statues in Roman Society is one of the most interesting recent art historical syntheses of Roman sculpture, and my work on the thesis would have been a lot more difficult without it. He has also written a good, short introduction to Roman art in general for the New Surveys in the Classics series. While away, I read an earlier article of his on “the destruction of statues in late antiquity”. The title was very promising, although as it turned out a lot of the material in the article was the same as that covered in his later book’s chapter on iconoclasm. However, there was more space in the article to go deeper into some of the material, and that alone made it a worthwhile read.

He sees the religious iconoclasm of the 4th century CE as a continuation of the secular iconoclasm seen in the centuries before. According to Stewart, “the destruction of pagan cult statues and the demise of pagan emperors, with their honorific statues, are part of the same process: the fall of the tyranny of Evil, and the rise of the kingdom of God” (1999: 181). It is an interesting point, although I won’t make my final judgment at this fairly early stage in the process. I will deal with this issue in my chapter on ‘Agents and Motives’, as well as the chapter on the literary sources. But my take on the relationship between damnatio memoriae and Christian iconoclasm is a little different. In fact, religious iconoclasm is a far older phenomenon than damnatio memoriae (see e.g. one of my earlier posts with an example of this), and the destruction of statues in Roman society goes further back that Stewart believes. This will be one of the key arguments in my attempt to contextualise early Christian iconoclasm.

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Continuity of Pagan Cult: The Shrine of Liber Pater at Cosa

Last week, I was discussing the work of Richard Rothaus and the question of continuity of pagan cult in the early Christian period. In Corinth, most of the sites that show continuity are extraurban, and at many rural sites in Greece (especially caves) non-Christians continue to give votives. An example of urban continuity of pagan cult comes from Cosa, where the shrine of Liber Pater was excavated as part of the American project in this Italian town. The shrine, that has been interpreted as the meeting place of a Bacchic cult association (for more on late antique associations, see the excellent website by Philip Harland, assistant professor of religion at Concordia University), was constructed in the fourth century directly facing the city’s forum, where there also was a Mithraeum. Part of the old basilica was at the same time converted to a church. In general the fourth and fifth centuries CE seem to be a period of renewed prosperity in Cosa after a couple of centuries of decline.

Cosa lamps
African lamps from the excavations of the shrine of Liber Pater, Cosa. Hayes Type IB, dated to the fourth/early fifth century CE. Photo source: Collins-Clinton 1977, fig. 34.

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The Papyrus Goleniscev

A while ago, I wrote about a graffito in the Via Paisiello hypogeum that possibly is the only ancient depiction of iconoclasm (it is also shown in the header of this page). There is another illustration, however, that at least alludes to an act of iconoclasm, the so-called Papyrus Goleniscev, one of the happy survivals from the sands of Egypt and named after the Russian collector, who bought the papyri fragments in Giza at the beginning of the 20th century. It was shortly after published by Adolf Bauer and Josef Strzygowski with some excellent colour reproductions of the illustrations that accompany the Greek text. It was probably made in Alexandria in the early fifth century CE.

Papyrus Goleniscev
A fragment of the Papyrus Goleniscev (folio VI verso B). Photo source: Elsner 1998, fig. 162.

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